7 Things You Didn't Know About Joe Biden, from an Archival Story

This 1982 profile reveals just how much of a terrifying smart ass Biden was (and may still be).

In 1982, Robert Sam Anson profiled a young senator named Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. for Esquire. While reporting the story, Biden invited Anson down to Delaware for a glimpse of his family life, which had been scarred by tragedy ten years earlier when Biden's wife and baby were killed in a car accident just weeks after he was elected to the U.S. Senate at age twenty-nine. What Anson created is a rich and revealing portrait of the man who would become our current vice president. But his story also offers a vital and touching look at Biden as a father with young children, including Beau then thirteen, who died from cancer in late May.

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With the recent passing of Beau and growing efforts to draft Biden into the presidential race, we couldn't think of a better time to republish Anson's story on Esquire Classics. In the nearly twenty-five years since the story was published, much has changed for Biden, but the fundamental man—and his tics—remain the same. Check out seven classic Bidenisms from Anson's 1982 profile below, then read full piece.

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• The plain fact was, Joe Biden scared people. There was about him an intensity of the kind Robert Kennedy possessed, a sense that somewhere behind those cool blue eyes a panther was on the loose and that if you made a false step, it would be clawing at your throat.

• "Your friends," he hissed, jabbing his finger into the fat man's chest, "are the sons of bitches who murdered the Nicaraguan people, and I have no goddamn sympathy for them." With that, Biden spun on his heel and stalked off.

• But despite the hour, his tie is fully knotted, and the suit with the old-fashioned handkerchief peeking out of the breast pocket still has its press. "Discipline," he explains, and knowing him, you believe it.

• By the time he gets to the check-out counter, he has greeted half a dozen shoppers by name, asked after their kids, promised two of them he'd see them at mass the next morning, and has said (or been asked) nothing at all about El Salvador or supply-side economics.

• He had the reputation, deserved or not, of being—and there was only one way to describe it—a smart ass.

• "How much did your union give me? Two thousand dollars, right?" Biden asked. The union man nodded. "You take that two thousand dollars," he said, "and stick it up your ass. I'll never ask you for a goddamn dime."

• That he was a savvy, even savage, debater, there seemed to be no doubt; even his enemies—of which there was no shortage—could credit him with that. He was quick on his feet and nimble with his questions. He went to the heart, he pointed the way, he cut through the crap. And yet, and yet . . ..

Read the full story, "Senator Joe Biden Is Back in the Race," at Esquire Classics.